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Pentagon

From October 2014 to the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire Primary 16 months later, AFSC trained more than 1200 people to talk with the presidential candidatesquestions about the excessive influence of Pentagon contractors, the for-profit prison industry, and a corrupt system that enables powerful corporations to drive American policy toward their own interests. Together, we asked the candidates more than 400 questions and documented many of them on this website. These "bird dogging" efforts, combined with the use of our giant banners and other educational activities, helped turn the political discourse toward urgent issues that might have otherwise been ignored.

Within a few hours before the Iowa Caucus, we talked with three candidates in Des Moines. Martin O’Malley called for openness, transparency and accountability in the Defense Department. Rick Santorum learned more about the immigrant detention quota and for-profit prisons. Jeb Bush wants to modernize the nuclear triad with an aspiration of reducing nuclear armaments.

In response to a question about the proposed nuclear weapons build up an Eisenhower's military-industrial-complex warning, Marco Rubio said times are different than in Eisenhower's day, when he thinks the Soviet Union had a strategic nuclear advantage of the USA. Now, he said, we are in danger of falling behind the Russians and Chinese and need to build more weapons, including nuclear weapons. He said there is a need for more competition among weapons suppliers to the Pentagon and other procurement reforms.

When Will suggested investment in cybersecurity, infrastructure, diplomacy, and even conventional forces would be better than spending a trillion dollars on a new generation of nuclear weapons, Chris Christie made vague references to diplomacy and non-proliferation, then said his nuclear weapons priority is the Ohio-class submarine replacement program.

Carly Fiorina was asked about corporate cronyism and the one trillion dollar nuclear weapons plan. She said we need to reform bureaucracy and pork in the Department of Defense saying, "there is a lot of fat and pork and corruption and greed in Pentagon contracts," but didn't address specifics on how to do this.

After identifying herself as an Iraq war veteran, Kelly Dougherty asked Rand Paul about the role of private military contractors that profit from war and use their profits to lobby for more contracts. "Anybody who gets money from government in the form of a contract should be limited in what they can do to lobby to get more of our money," said Paul. "It would say in the contract, 'I agree not to lobby and give contributions to legislators.' I think you could limit special interests by contract, voluntary contract, when they do business with government."